Twenty dollars in tomatoes???

Juicy little sun-ripened pearls of red, orange, and yellow, cherry tomatoes have always been among my favorite aspects of late summer. As I've matured I've put names to the faces of the Sungold and the Sweet 100, and I've learned that while they're available at the mega-mart virtually year-round, they're just got as tasty trucked up from the southern hemisphere in the dark days of December...

So when I learned that my little Aerogarden offered a kit with cherry tomatoes I thought my md-winter dream of caprese salad might become reality. I'm not exactly a green thumb -- to my mother's great dismay I killed the unkillable palm tree and cactus in college -- but we had some luck with the aerogarden herbs last fall and I was willing to take a risk...

And as you can see from the over-exposed photograph above, I DID get tomatoes. Tasty tomatoes. They were slow growing, but the little buds after 8 weeks and the itty bitty orbs in the 12th week kept my attention.

I think I missed something in the instructions around properly supporting them though -- my plants caved under the weight of the fully ripened fruit, and each plant yielded about 30 tomatoes before completely giving in. So I'll call it a qualified success and try again next year...

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